


Leave as though fire burns under your feet

by MontagueBitch (porcia_catonis)



Series: The Fulvia Chronicles [4]
Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Character Death, F/M, Polyamorous Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 09:22:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9649583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcia_catonis/pseuds/MontagueBitch
Summary: An alternate ending for Fulvia.  She still took ill too soon, but Antony was brought to her as she faded.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written based on some sads thought up with a friend of mine. Evi, if you see this, you're phenomenal. Also, I'm in Fulvia/Antony hell. Anyhow, a quick preface; I had to pick a disease for Fulvia to be dying of, so tuberculosis it became.

She has not gotten up from her bed in several days, and is all but sure the world thinks she's died already.  She notices now, as she can hardly bother to hide the blood on her handkerchiefs any longer--her men and Lucius's have all heard by now, that half the Antonine leadership lies, consumed by her own lungs, withering away to something smaller, weaker by the day.  Fulvia is all but begging sweet Death to take her, that nobody shall have to bear witness to the shame of her state, reduced so.  Oh, how Octavian would laugh at her to see her now.  

She is caught in another fit, tasting her own blood, and shaking like a leaf in a storm when a young soldier peers inside, quickly ushered in by the servant attending her.  Bless her, thinks Fulvia, for knowing how much the mistress hates for the door to stay open long, where her coughing will carry through to anyone in the camp.  "My Lady?"  He is cautious, his eyes wide.  Yes, she thinks, let it be confirmation to you.  He must know that nobody drowns in a pool of their own blood, and lives.  No amount of rest, or warm milk had cured her.

Shuddering, Fulvia manages to stop, to wipe the red from her mouth, and draw a shaky breath.  She tastes metal, and the room around her spins too much for her to bear to sit up any further, but still, she forces herself to speak.  "Yes?  What is it?  I beg you, be brief."  She is short of breath already, moments within catching it.  She's had less and less time between her body choking itself of late, and each day has had her fall into the pattern of waiting for the time that it never stops at all.

"My Lady, you have company who would be seen at this time."  Fulvia feels herself balk.  She cannot have anyone see her, know what a weak thing she is.  She opens her mouth to order the visitor be sent instead to Lucius, insist that Lucius can and shall handle it, when he continues to speak.  "He is a persistent visitor, Lady.  He would not hear Lucius that you had given orders not to be disturbed, and followed me even now to your tent."  Embarrassment wraps itself around her head, and shame her heart.  Somewhere, though, she thinks in the pit of her belly, she feels the familiar shock of rage.  What man would be so haughty and enter a camp under such demands to have himself seen when order stood directly otherwise?  Would such a man think he owned the whole of the camp?   Her lip curls, and it must be the first they've seen of the formidable Fulvia she had been once before, in a very long time.

"He will not go, then?"  She gestures, lifting a hand to urge the guard from her sight.  She sees him duck behind the opening again, hears him speak and someone answer.  In a moment, he's back again, and she catches a flash as he goes of a silhouette she thinks she's seen before, but it's covered again before she can deem it anything more than a trick of the light.

"Well you see, Lady, that is not true, as such."  He seems hesitant, there is something he would rather his commander not know.

"Then," she says, patience worn as a mask, "do what you must to send him on his way."

"My lady, the man says he shall go once Fulvia asks him to, in the flesh."  Fulvia groans, realizing that whomever this visitor is, he has more strength than this guard has spine, and she shall have to, as she always does, so all heavy lifting herself.

"Fine."  She snarls the words, and she feels more conscious than she has for days as she does it.  "Send this bastard in."  She is composed, for the entry, though her face feels hot.  She feels almost alive again, the defiance doing what no food or drink could any longer.  She feels again like the woman Clodius married, who commanded his gangs, who pricked the tongue of her beheaded enemy.  Fulvia only knows herself anymore when she is angry; whoever she receives may have her as she is yet.  Let it be said that even on her deathbead, Fulvia, Antony's wife, was full of rage and fire.

The servant goes again, and being fetched, the hatch opens once again.  The familiar silhouette has returned in full force, illuminated now in full color before her.  She wonders if her fever has rendered her mad, for she is certain that she is seeing things.

* * *

 

"Is that what they're calling me in Rome now?"  He parts the mouth of the tent with a laugh, short and barked, as he always does when he knows now what to say.  "A bastard?"  He clicks his tongue and shakes his head.  "Here I thought they didn't care about about my father to bother besmirching him further."

He steps through the flap of the tent, Fulvia's guard aside at last.  His wife is laid out in the bed, a ghost of a woman, wispy and flushed with irritation and illness.  As she takes him in, realizes who that persistent man outside-- _oh, clever Fulvia, you should have known!_ \--was him, her face drains of it all, matching the sheets that all but drown her in the bed.  Those sheets, though, are stained.  Red drops color the white, from ruby teardrops sometimes, to the angry patches of it on the handkerchief strewn around her.  Antony's heart sinks, and he knows now why a courier had told him that if he did not come to her camp, he would not see her again.  There was no ultimatum made, but death's promise to take her soon.

"Who sent for you?"  It comes out as a gasp, and he cannot tell if it is shock or illness.

"A man of Lucius's.  He seemed to take some rather urgent initiative."  Fulvia, never one to be shy, draws up her covers, as if he were a stranger, and she were ashamed to be in his presence.  He feels himself rebuffed, feels the truth that she had not sent for him at all.  And why would she?  He is a figurehead for her and his brother to rally behind.  He is a man wanted nowhere but in Egypt; the rejection, though she says nothing, is so loud he can hear it echo.  

But before turning him away, Fulvia surprises him, turning to her nurse, to the soldier.  "Leave us,"  she says.  "I should like to speak with my husband alone."  There is a look of hesitation, but her face bears the same resolve it always has, jaw set, daring anyone to defy her.  Antony feels a pang in his chest, remembering that look on her face so many times he's lost count.  It takes him back to days when they were young, and mad on possibility.  To him, those days hadn't ended.  It was never their custom to let time apart sully a reunion.  He'd have his time to go back to her eventually, perhaps even to bring her eastward to him one day; they had all the time in the world.  And yet, they didn't.  She didn't.

Her hand reaches out, pats a space on the bed.  "Sit,"  she isn't ordering any longer, relaxed now that they are alone, and he cannot help but obey her nonetheless.

"I thought you were going to turn me away," he said.  "I could see it in your eyes.  I certainly heard your intentions before I entered."

"Before you entered."  Her eyes, unlike the rest of her, have not hollowed in the slightest.  There's a glint in them, and a sad smile on her lips.  "You aren't wrong.  Under no circumstances did I wish for you to see me like this."  She laughs, but cuts herself off with a cough, grabbing her another bit of cloth, and it's all he can do to grab her, try and hold her still, that she does not pitch herself off the bed in  the force of it, rubbing her back as she comes down.  "Don't you see why?"  Her voice, smaller now, comes.  "I'm wretched now--everything I was is fading, bleeding out of me.  I couldn't walk to the next tent, Antony.  I'm _nothing_ now."

His heart does an awful lurch. It was one thing to know that the Fulvia he looked on  was sick.  It was another entirely to see her in throes he knew were going to take her permanently.  "Don't say that,"  His own voice comes out more choked, rougher than he expected.  "You have never, in you life, been nothing."

"I know I wasn't.  Until now."  She's leaning into him, and he takes back his earlier fear of rejection.  It's little relief to know that he was right, that their reunions are always welcome despite time.  This shall be the last one.  "You've got blood on you, now, I'm--"

"Don't apologize to me, Fulvia.  God, you have so little to apologize for, my head's spinning."  He holds her tighter, feels her lean her head onto him and sink further into it.  He's even more sobered when he speaks again.  "Death doesn't erase whatever life came before it, you know.  It won't make you a different person."  No, Caesar is not less great for his fall, and neither shall she be.

"But it can taint the memory, and cut it all short, can't it?  I'll be remembered a sickly waif, if I even last the night.  That's why I didn't want you to come."

"Fulvia," he keeps saying her name, as though it can keep her hanging on longer.  "You can't mean that." But she is herself, and cannot so easily change her mind, and it figures.  "Then no one shall.  I'll not breathe a word when I leave your side, what state you're in.  You have my word."

He cannot see her, and does not, for a moment, realize what the trembling comes from, but when she looks up at him, her wet eyes offer explanation.  "Thank you.  And I'm sorry--don't, please, let me,"  a heavy breath.  "It's getting harder to-to speak, just let me."  She needs to stop, and he offers her the water cup at her bedside, which she drinks a weak sip of.  "I'm sorry I couldn't cut him  down--Octavian.  Lucius and I weren't enough.  I'm sorry, they've started to believe him.  I'm sorry I'm dying before I can keep that tiny bastard from poisoning all of Rome, filling it with his words and seizing it all."  It is her city, too, Antony has never been fool enough to doubt that, and he can see the apology in his wife's words may be for more than simply himself.

He squeezes her shoulder softly.  "Don't be.  You lead legions for me, never asked to, never trained.  You stood against a tyrant, and I promise you, Fulvia, I'll finish the job for myself."   He presses a kiss to her brow.  "I ought to be sorry, that I wasn't here.  It wasn't supposed to end here, was it?"

She shakes her head, returns his kiss with one of her own, to his cheek.  "It shouldn't.  Fate is cruel.  I always knew I'd die with blood on my mouth.  I assumed, always, it would be a sword that accompanied it."  He is alarmed until he sees her smiling at that.  

He opens his mouth to say something else, but another bout of coughing comes, and it's all her can do to ground her.  When she's back from it, there is an urgency in her eyes.  "I love you,"  she throws the words like rafts to the ocean.  "I always have.  I love you, whether boy of the street gang, or consort of Egypt, or emperor of Rome."  Her grip on his arm is tight, her knuckles pale with the effort.  "You know, I hope she's good to you.  Your Queen.  I hope you both live long."

"I love you, too."  He says it slowly, chews it over. She is not one for heaving her heart for all to see, save for within the sanctity of sheets.  

"Stay with me."  She's pleading.  "Hold me."  He can see where this is going, can feel breath stopping in his throat, but again he obeys.

Fulvia loses consciousness within the hour, and by morning, her body is cold.  Antony's eyes, for the second time in his life, are scarlet as the dawn with tears when finally he can make himself emerge, whispers what has happened only to Lucius, then an order to his men to leave.

He only hopes he can fulfill that last order. Live long, finish what she started.  That would keep the fire, he thinks, that she so feared losing, alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "You" by Keaton Henson. And also, I hope you enjoyed the ironic ending that Definitely Won't Happen, poor Antony.


End file.
